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Dec. 26
Kalihiwai Bay, Kauai
Total driving so far 4,939 miles / 7,902 km

dream-villa-Kauai-on-google.maps

We are approaching nearly 4 weeks in Hawaii, staying on the north shores of Kauai, the most northern island of the archipelago:

I cannot describe Hawaii’s magic with a single sentence, since Kauai (and I guess the other islands too; Lanai for sure, which I have visited in the past) offers a special aura to visitors who want to see it.

Just skip the Hawaiian stereotypes we all know … surfers and big waves, coconuts (or coconut sunscreen), lei necklaces, hula dancing, luau festivals, cooking pigs in a pit, ukuleles, crying steel guitars, and close to that Elvis’ Blue Hawaii movie from 1961. (If you want to brush up on Elvis, try this: Elvis-Blue_Hawaii)

Luckily, Hawaii is different.

I can’t say how exactly it is different, that would require living in Hawaii. And I am not sure how different the islands are to each other, I speculate they are quite different. Kauai is more rainy, tropical than the other islands, green, lush, with amazing vegetations, and a bit less developed.

I asked nearly everybody I met and who lives on Kauai if Kauai is paradise.

I think the jury is still out on that. As expected, its not an anonymous ‘yes’, but its also not an anonymous ‘no’.

The Nature

Nothing for words, just take a look:

The time warp

Kauai decelerates you.

Time runs more slowly. You decelerate. You look closer. You think in the moment, since nature is so overwhelming that all our errands, worries, ambitions, fears are so small in comparison. Call it “The National Park Effect”. I felt it very clearly in Yellowstone. People are relaxed, friendly, smiling, and everybody greets everybody when you pass by. You can’t do anything else than look and inhale …

and photograph :-):

Surfers & surf

Yes, there is a ton of surfing going on. Its not a cliche, its part of the life style for many locals, it’s a true surf culture. Put the surf board in the truck, and go! If you walk along the parking lot of a public beach and you see trucks, not mustangs or sedans, you know all the people are locals.

Winter time is surfing time. The locals say the swell comes down from the Arctic Ocean, the reason the north shores have the big waves. The surf is stunning in its beauty, power and seductiveness. The telltale is that hardly no surfer seems to walk with the board into the water, they all run, obviously thinking ‘why wait any longer?’.

The surf is also quickly deadly. Rip curls are the killer. They pull you out in no time. Folks like myself are destined to underestimate how fast that can happen just a few meters into the water. Turning on the brain helps, or simply listen to the life guards (if a beach has life guards). Today, on December 26, we see the red rescue helicopter going back and forth, searching, on the outer rim of our bay. The search started yesterday and keeps going on for the second day. The locals say its now just about finding the dead body.

Surfing makes you happy, though. No question about that. Water, waves, flying over water, what’s not to like…

Chickens, cars & albatrosses

Chickens and cars have gone wild on Kauai. The chickens are feral, the cars similarly are all over the place by getting dumped anywhere, on the side of the road, on a property. Luckily, there are more wild chickens than dumped cars.

The local hearsay is that the chickens escaped from their coops during the hurricane Iwa in 1982 and hurricane Iniki in 1992. Go figure.

If Kauai would need an island animal, the chickens are clearly outperforming the albatrosses.

The albatrosses inhabit for example the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge (https://www.fws.gov/refuge/kilauea-point). We caught up with them when our apartment host Claudia took us to the property of friends of hers close to that bird sanctuary. We caught them making out 🙂

Last but not least, something about food

Coconuts are abundant and tasty. They sell for $10 a pop on a street stand to make a point of how expensive food and groceries are. On average groceries in a store are 2x as expensive than in New Jersey, and this includes local grown products such as oranges. Crazy. Star fruits are delicious and beautiful. Food trucks are quite common and serve very nice food.

Fish can be delicious, but is also very expensive and locals complain that the ocean waters have been way too overfished. On days of high demand, restaurants might serve flown in fish. Also kind of crazy, considering that Kauai is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Is Kauai paradise?
I think its very close…